While most ants do not sting like wasps or bite like mosquitos, finding these pests inside your home can still be extremely unsettling. Not only is an infestation unsanitary, but ants can cause extensive damage to your furniture and your home as a whole.
With that being said, determining whether you have a minor ant problem or a major infestation on your hands can be difficult. Before driving yourself crazy searching for a nest or evidence of an infestation, knowing what you should be looking for in the first place can be helpful. Here are some particularly common signs of an ant infestation, all of which could indicate that it is time to call on professional ant removal services from Ready Pest Control.
Even in well-maintained homes, there is usually no shortage of opportunities for a few flies, ants, or other bugs to get in from the outside. Because of this, it may seem normal to see a handful of ants and assume it is no big deal. However, if you see even a few ants crawling around where there used to be no ants, this is often a sign of an infestation or a larger colony nearby.
Whenever ants reside in a new area, they create pheromone trails that other ants in their colony can follow toward nearby food or water sources. This is why ants often travel in long lines together, and if you see a line of ants trailing through your house, this is almost always a surefire sign of an ant infestation.
Typically, you can trace lines of ants back to an entry or exit point between where they have nested and where they go to look for food or water. See little piles of sawdust or dirt surrounding tiny holes with ants around them? Those are likely entrances to their nest. Certain species of ants will even track that sawdust or dirt along with them when they travel away from their nest, leaving visible trails that can serve as evidence of an ant infestation.
If an ant infestation gets particularly bad, the ants may cause enough damage to wooden structures (or whatever else they have decided to nest in) to make it structurally unsound. Wood that sounds hollow when you knock on it, is soft to the touch, or crumbles or breaks under pressure may be a sign of an ant infestation.
Certain species of ants can fly for a short period of time in their lifespans, and when that period is over, they shed their wings and leave them behind. While it is unlikely to happen with every ant infestation, finding detached wings in windowsills or near doorways in your home may be signs that ants have recently moved in.
While there are a few methods you can use on your own to mitigate the spread of an ant infestation, fully removing ants from inside your home almost always requires help from a pest control team. Fortunately, the help you need is available from the trained professionals at Ready Pest Control. Our team has years of experience working on residential and commercial properties of all shapes and sizes and dealing with virtually every ant species.
We are committed to providing efficient and cost-effective solutions to our clients. Call today to discuss a course of action in response to signs of an ant infestation in your home.
